Commentary: Advice of Horace Greeley

Greeley's "Go in Peace" Idea

Greeley's "go in peace" idea proved confusing to contemporaries
and, later, to historians. Some have argued that Greeley intended to
strengthen southern unionism, but if that failed, to provide for
peaceable separation, especially if it were accomplished in the
proper manner. Peaceable separation was preferable to the horrors of
civil war.

Yet Greeley's motives were by no means as clear as the slogan "go
in peace" implied. A number of historians, including David M. Potter,
Kenneth M. Stampp, and Glyndon G. Van Deusen, contend that Greeley's
proposal was motivated in large part by hostility to compromise. His
plan was, in fact, an alternative to making concessions to the South.
He surrounded his proposal for peaceable secession with so many
constraints and obstacles that the possibility of legitimate
peaceable secession was nullified. Secession must, for example, be
based upon genuine popular approval after full discussion and
deliberation. That, clearly, was not how he viewed events in the
South, including South Carolina. As Potter explains, Greeley's
position was: "First, the South may depart in peace. Second, she must
observe certain forms in doing so. Third, she is not, in the present
movement, observing these forms." Greeley's proposal, then, may have
lacked sincerity, and Stampp bluntly labels it a "fraud." He was
never a pacifist and was prepared to fight if secessionists did not
meet his conditions.

Greeley's anti-compromise idea was complicated and ambiguous,
subject to different interpretations. Whatever Greeley's own views,
some northerners sincerely adopted his "go in peace" idea. They were
prepared to accept southern independence, which they considered
likely to be temporary, rather than resort to war.

(Click here to see an
example of the conditional nature of Greeley's "go in peace" idea.)